Close to Home by Frances Wilson

Frances Wilson is a painter and book illustrator, as well as a poet. She studied in London and Paris before marrying and settling down in Hertfordshire. She teaches creative writing and is one of the founders of the Ware Poets.

I should like to sing the praises of mascara,
those thumb-sized boxes with dry slabs of black
and a miniscule brush and mirror.
A toy. A transition from childhood.
They opened up a glamorous initiation -
in a bedroom in a pension in Boulogne, by an American girl,
only fifteen, an Audrey Hepburn, innocent-sultry.

from Mascara